1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of human-to-human messaging systems and more particularly to securing the content of messages in a human-to-human messaging system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Electronic mail, referred to in the art as e-mail, has proven to be the most widely used computing application globally. Though e-mail has been a commercial staple for several decades, due to the explosive popularity and global connectivity of the Internet, e-mail has become the preferred mode of asynchronous communications, regardless of the geographic separation of communicating parties. Today, more e-mails are processed in a single hour than phone calls. Clearly, e-mail as an asynchronous mode of communications has been postured to replace all other modes of communications excepting voice telephony.
In contrast to the asynchronous nature of e-mail, the recent rapid development of the Internet has led to advanced modes of synchronous, real-time collaboration able to fulfill the real-time communicative requirements of the modern computing participant. Using the Internet as a backbone, individuals worldwide can converge in real-time in cyberspace to share ideas, documents and images in a manner not previously possible through conventional telephony and video conferencing. To facilitate collaboration over the Internet, a substantial collection of synchronous messaging technologies and protocols have been assembled to effectively deliver audio, video and data over the single data communications medium of the Internet. These synchronous messaging technologies include several, real-time human-to-human collaborative environments such as instant messaging and persistent chat rooms.
Regardless of whether one considers synchronous or asynchronous modes of communication, security in the transmission of electronic messages can be of paramount concern, not only to the recipient of the message, but also to the sender of the message. Generally, security for messaging implies the encryption of a message such that only an intended recipient can decrypt the message to view its content. Managing the encryption and decryption of every transmitted and received message, however, can be cumbersome. In particular, where a recipient can view messages in a private setting, encryption will not be required. Yet, there are times where the presence of other users can compromise the security of the content of a message.
In most cases, the recipient of a message can determine when persons are present so as to avoid viewing a private message. The sender of the message, however, can have no involvement in the determination of when a message is to be obscured from view of others. In many instances it would be desirable to empower the sender of a message to control the privacy of a message; yet, the sender of the message ought to be empowered to control the privacy of a message without requiring the recipient of the message to manage an encryption and decryption process for every received message.